Business Notes Agriculture

To ease a nationwide milk glut, the U.S. Department of Agriculture intends to start paying dairy farmers to sell their herds for export or slaughter and get out of the business. The USDA incentive: up to $22.50 in lieu of each 100 lbs. of milk that the farmer normally would have produced over one year. But to participate in the program, dairymen must brand every cow with a 3-in. X on the right jaw. Reason: without such markings, cows that were supposedly slaughtered or exported could be surreptitiously sold to other U.S. farmers ; and keep on producing milk for the American market. The USDA has received about 40,000 applications for the program, which could cost $1.8 billion.

Many farmers and animal-rights activists, however, say the branding is unnecessarily cruel. Protesters marched last week in front of the USDA offices in Washington, symbolically branding one another on their right cheeks with sponges that had been dipped in paint. Some demonstrators suggested that cows could be identified with an ear tag, a tattoo or even a strategically placed microchip. Late in the week a federal district court judge in Rochester, responding to a complaint from the local Humane Society against Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng, issued a temporary restraining order to halt the branding and directed the USDA to inform all dairymen participating in the program of his action. A full judicial hearing on the issue will be held this week.